


A Sequence of Lamentable Happenings

by captainoflifeandlemons



Category: All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket, Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Arson, Breaking and Entering, Flooded Forest Theory, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Rootbeer Floats (can cure all ills), Stain'd-by-the-Sea, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 11,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7173938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainoflifeandlemons/pseuds/captainoflifeandlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who is the mysterious stranger seeking a Snicket in Stain'd-by-the-Sea? Why is water rapidly  rising in the Clusterous Forest? Can rootbeer floats really cure all ills? Are these all the wrong questions?</p><p>A series of mostly unconnected ficlets (with the exception of "The Quiet Quay", which directly follows "The Flooded Forest" and "The Valorous Volunteer), some of which take place in the same universe, some of which don't. Some of them intersect briefly; some of them contradict each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rootbeer Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> These were originally posted elsewhere, but I tidied them up a bit for ao3. My apologies if any typos remain. Each piece was written for one of the prompts I recieved, which have been listed in the notes at the beginning of every chapter. Please note that these are not arranged in chronological order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “young Lemony/Kit/Jacques being cute OR them older and randomly encountering each other, suddenly reunited”

“You’re killing me!”

Kit threw herself to the floor as if to punctuate her point, a clear sign that she had been skipping her History of Burglary course for Theatrical Coding. Again. Lemony continued to hiss “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” at an ever-increasing volume, a tactic he had picked up from his Rhetorical Analysis partner. Kit responded by clutching his ankle around the insignia printed there and yanking him to the floor. That was when Jacques walked in. His usual concentrated frown widened into a grin as he looked down at his siblings.

“What’s going on here?”

* * *

 

Kit inhaled, sucking the soot-stained air of the City into her lungs as though it was a lifeline. It drifted lightly across her face, running parallel to the actual lifeline holding her to this side of the _Daily Punctilio_ ’s auxiliary records office. She pulled herself up on the one, still breathing in the other, until she drew level with the third window on the fifth floor. Using her lockpick (a gift from an old friend) as a lever, she pried open the window; within seconds, the building swallowed her in the same way she did the cool night wind. Inside, the darkness that had taken refuge from the stars and streetlamps was waiting to greet her. The volunteer didn’t bother with her flashlight. She knew this building well enough from the days that both Jacques and Lemony had been in the _Punctilio_ ’s employ. Besides, she would need the battery saved for when she located the original version of the article that had uprooted her from the Mortmain Mountains, jerking her life on a thread until she found herself in the city she hadn’t seen since her arrest. An article like that was worth reading before it was destroyed, and she’d rather not have to use the matches in her back pocket to light the room. Although—her mouth twitched slightly—there would be a certain irony in that.

* * *

 

Kit sat up abruptly. Lemony hissed for another second, just to prove that he was stopping on his own whim. Then they both began speaking at once, and only someone as used to the phenomena as Jacques was would be able to decipher the result.

“Lemony won’t stop hissing—”

“She attacked me just ‘cause—”

“—has been hanging out with that snake kid again—”

“—my leg, and he’s a herpetologist, Kit—”

“—first time we’ve had off since we turned eleven, J—”

“—here means snake scientist—”

“—the one who insisted on rootbeer floats in the first place, and now he drank all of the rootbeer!”

They both stopped for breath. Jacques, seeing both the root of the problem and his opportunity to be heard, cut in. “I hid a few bottles last time we got some. Come on, it’s fine.”

Kit and Lemony quieted down at the prospect of seeing one of Jacques’ hiding places. They periodically tore the headquarters apart looking for them but only ever found a handful. Jacques didn’t mind giving this one away; he had easily two dozen more in this wing of the building alone.

* * *

 

Jacques watched the retreating shadow of the night guard dance along the hall, guilt rolling hollowly in his mind. The woman was an old friend of his from years before, when he first wrote for the Punctilio. Her job might be in danger just from letting him in—although of course, everyone might be threatened by far worse than unemployment if Jacques didn’t get what he had come for. The guard wasn’t the only associate he had among the Punctilio’s staff. When a man with a tattoo had entered the building that morning and never left, the eldest Snicket was notified. It had been over a month since Jacques had heard from anyone. What side of the schism the man fell on didn’t matter. At this point, he just wanted confirmation that he wasn’t the last one left—confirmation, and maybe some news on the events at Winnipeg. It had been a short hike from his current safehouse to the city limits. Too short, really, to be safe, but when Jacques was in the country he couldn’t help but visit the city he’d grown up in and around. He told himself that it was nostalgia. He told himself that he wasn’t expecting to see them, not here, not in person, not after all this time. But for a member of a secret organization, Jacques had never been good at lying.

* * *

 

Once Jacques’ stash (on the roof, tucked beneath false shingling) had been looted, the trio trooped back to the kitchen for ice cream. They sat on the counter as they ate their floats, Lemony’s legs dangling feet above the floor.

“I’ve missed this.” Kit spoke softly, staring out the door as volunteers and neophytes floated past. Lemony reached out with rootbeer-sticky fingers and gripped his sister’s hand. He held Jacques’ elbow on his other side, drink left balancing between his knees.

Jacques just nodded. He knew what she meant; he always knew what Kit meant. The siblings saw each other almost every day, but they didn’t really see each other. There was rarely time to talk, to play the games long since traded in for tattoos. “So have I. But even if we don’t do this again for a while, it doesn’t change anything. We’re a team.” His mother’s words rose up like smoke. “We take care of our own.”

Kit flicked her straw at him. “Sure thing, J.” She laughed, sliding from the counter and pulling Lemony with her. Jacques followed, shaking his head. The three Snickets walked out into the hallway and into their role as volunteers. In time, it would lead them far from this building, far from the city and each other. But for a brief moment, they weren’t firefighters. They were just a family, and something about that felt more right, more noble, than anything else ever could.

* * *

 

Lemony had been called many things in recent years, but no adjective described his current state so aptly as “crumpled.” It fit the pain in his arms and legs from spending the past five fours in a medium-sized foot locker; it fit the creases in his suit and hat from spending the past five days in the same clothing; it fit the consuming despair in his soul from spending the past five years on the run. But the silence in the building that meant all the reporters and receptionists had fled reached into his hiding space and ironed out the ridges, until he was able to push open the lid and straighten the rest of himself out. Or at least, most of himself. The soul and the hat both proved to be beyond his abilities, but for now it would have to do. Lemony followed his memory down corridors and stairwells until he stood before a small office. If his source could be trusted, this office would contain information on the whereabouts of a certain journalist he had been tracking for the past two months. He swept into the room, flicking on the lightswitch instinctually. The room looked almost exactly as he remembered it. Filing cabinets nestled into corners, building nests of post-its and memorandums long ignored. A desk took up nearly half the available space, its nameplate bearing nothing but a small image of a raven. In fact, the only thing that had changed since the last time he saw this room was the addition of two people who didn’t seem to know whether they should be staring at him or each other in the wan, haggard light.

At last, Lemony spoke. “What would you say to a rootbeer float?”

Kit doubled over laughing, sending a stack of papers flying. Her eyes glistened, maybe from more than just the laughter. Jacques put his arms around both of his siblings, drawing them close. “I think that sounds perfect.”

And it was.


	2. The Foregoing Flames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Ellington Feint and Lemony Snicket are reunited post asoue”

There was a town, and there was a woman, and there was a chemical formula. The woman believed that if she could perfect the forumula, she could save the town.

There was a town, and there was an organization, and there was a sea. The organization believed that if they could return the sea to the town, they could save a city.

There was a town, and there was a man, and there was a taxi. The man drove the taxi to the town, and he believed that he would never believe again.

They were wrong.

Lemony leaned against the wall of what had once been a lighthouse, staring out across the water. Even after all of these years, it was strange to think of Stain’d-by-the-Sea as more than a misnomer. Or what had once been Stain’d-by-the-Sea. When a town surrendered to flame, when its people fled, was it still a town? 

He didn’t know. Stain’d-by-the-Sea had burnt long ago, the same day the VFD flooded the valley around it. There was a cruel irony there. The water rushed in to bury the Clusterous Forest (and the carcass of a train) just as the ashes began to settle, just when it was too late. But Lemony’s mind was on another fire, one miles away. If he half-closed his eyes, he could just imagine a line of smoke in the distance. But that was impossible; the Hotel Denoument’s skeleton would be far outside the range of his vision.

Tightening his fingers around the small object in his left coat pocket, Lemony stepped out from the lighthouse’s shadow. A moment later he was at the cliff’s edge. The water glistened beneath him like a mythical siren, denying all danger. But he knew better. He knew what lurked in these waters. And that was what made this the true last safe place, the only safe place for the object now raised above his head. He pulled his arm back and flung the sugar bowl out over the waves, out of his story and into another.

“You know, Mr. Snicket, littering is a serious crime in this part of the country.”

It wasn’t the voice itself that caught Lemony by surprise. In his mind, the voice and this place were irrevocably intertwined. It was the tone the voice used—not hateful, not vicious, not judging and condemning. It sounded the way he remembered. Older, maybe, and more tired, but that was all. It was enough of a shock that he spun around with no regard for his precarious position, and he would have joined the sugar bowl in the depths below had the owner of the voice not pulled him back. 

“I’ve committed far worse crimes,” the writer managed at last. “And I’m not sorry for most of them. But I am sorry for the pain they led to, the…series of unfortunate events they caused.”

“I know,” said the voice. “Everyone is sorry. But it wasn’t all unfortunate.” She smiled a smile that could have meant anything.

Lemony knew that he should have asked what she was doing here. He should have asked whether or not the sugar bowl would truly be safe. He should have asked if there was more he could have done, for the Baudelaires, for the woman before him now. But something told him that those were all the wrong questions.

Instead, he simply stood there, leaning into Ellington Feint. Together they watched the sea revel in its reclaimed territory, until Lemony’s eyes drifted back to the point on the hotizon where the city lay hidden. The smoke, if it had ever been there at all, was gone.


	3. The Seeking Stranger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Anything Kit and Dewey or Kellar Haines because they are seriously underrated characters”

Kellar took one look at the man—the bags beneath his eyes, the commonplace book sticking from his pocket, the corner of a tattoo peeking out above his shoe—and sighed. “Let me guess. You’re looking for a Snicket.”

The visitor flushed slightly and walked into the room, ducking both the question and the low doorframe. “Are you Kellar Haines?”

“That’s me.” The typist handed the stranger a business card (made by Moxie before she left for the city, it read “Kellar Haines, Acting Editor-in-Chief”). “And you are?”

“Dewey Denouement. Although I don’t have a card to prove it.” Dewey smiled sheepishly, accepting the card by way of firm handshake.

“Welcome to the office of _The Stain’d Lighthouse_ , Dewey Denoument. Now, are you here for Lemony, Jacques, or Kit?”

Dewey began to stumble through an expression of denial, but Kellar waved the words away. “I’ve been covering for Moxie at the paper for three months, and I’ve known about your association for far longer. This town isn’t on the way to or from anywhere. We don’t get many tourists, especially not tourists with eyes on their ankles. And I know from experience that if someone from the VFD is in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, it’s because they’re looking for a Snicket.”

It was true. In fact, it was a running joke among the residents of the town, or at least those in Kellar’s generation. Seven weeks ago it had been the man with a day of the week for a name, and a month before that was the unpleasant woman who had made the mistake of telling Mayor Cleo Knight that chemistry was “out.” Word spread like—well, the usual ironic metaphor—among those on all sides of the schism. Once the news was out that the Snickets had adopted Stain’d as their own unofficial headquarters, villains and volunteers alike began to flock to the town for information on the siblings.

“Kit,” Dewey said at last, breaking Kellar’s line of thought. “Do you—I know that you have no way of knowing whether or not you can trust me, but we were seperated at the mill, and—I need to find her.”

Kellar ran a hand through his hair, leaning back and appraising the man. “Kit Snicket is a dangerous person to find. Not just because of her skills in self-defense and practical jousting; nobody has a penchant for finding themselves in mortal peril like a Snicket does. Are you sure you want me to help you?”

If the look in Dewey’s eyes was anything to judge by, he was considering throttling Kellar. Or no, not throttling—the man didn’t seem the throttling type—he was considering spoiling the ending of every story H. G. Wells ever wrote. “Am I sure? I don’t care if Kit is at the bottom of the ocean, the middle of the desert, facing the Great Unknown, or being forced to listen to someone read the complete works of Edgar Guest! If she’s in trouble, that’s all the more reason for me to get to her. And if you won’t help me, I’ll find someone who will.”

Kellar grinned, getting up from his seat. “I was hoping you’d say something like that. Kit!”

He hollered the last word, and there was a sound of footsteps from above. “What is it, K?”

“Someone’s here to see you. Don’t worry, I vetted him, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to try an assassinate anyo—”

That was as far as he got before Kit Snicket cut him off with a shout, lunging over the last few steps and plowing straight into Dewey. She lifted him up in a hug, and he took advantage of his elevated position to kiss the top of her head.

The smile on Kellar’s face tugged itself wider. He was ready for Moxie to return, but—all things considered—he was beginning to enjoy this job.


	4. The Penned Player

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “kit and olaf, the origin of the ‘i told you i’d do that one last time’ line in the end.”
> 
> I don't ship Kit and Olaf, and I'd like to state that their relationship is clearly unhealthy; generally, it's not something I would prefer to write about. However, I think their shared past is critical to each characters' development, and that's important to note.

“Are you going to kill me?”

His voice held none of the venom of the past few years, none of the bitterness she expected, not even the terror-disguised-as-conviction that had marked his childhood and the childhood of every volunteer. It was just tired, a voice as bruised as his face was where Jacques had punched him. (It was the first time she remembered seeing Jacques angry, truly angry. But even her twin had his pressure points, and the sight of Lemony covered in blood—Jacques had received the same training as the rest of them. He cared so openly that she forgot it at times.)

Kit folded her legs, settling herself onto the ground. The room was small, but she put what distance there was between herself and the captive. “How could you ask that, Olaf?”

The man tossed his shoulders, a theatrical gesture that belied the pain arcing across his frame. “You killed my parents.”

“Is that what you think?” Kit tried to meet his gaze, but the room was dark. Only Olaf’s shadowed outline was visible. Smoke and mirrors.

Another shrug, as though he didn’t care whether or not his accusation was true. (He did. Oh, he did.) “Maybe not you personally. Beatrice, Bertrand, Lemony, whoever. But you let them. You helped them.”

She couldn’t stand this, the casual way they were talking. As though nothing had changed. As though they were both still children, swapping stories without cost. The price of speaking had fallen victim to the inflation of betrayal and heartbreak. “What about the people you’re helping, Olaf? I know the truth behind the Kornbluth fires; I know what you did to Markson and the Calibans!”

“And what about Gregor Anwhistle?” Olaf shot back. “I can play this game as well as you, Kit. Your problem is that you still believe what they told us as kids. You still believe that there’s a right and a wrong side of this schism, that nobility and villainy mean anything. You still believe that you’re a volunteer. Well, I don’t remember signing up. I don’t remember having a choice.”

Kit wanted to scream, and she might have, but she wasn’t even supposed to be down here. She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. “If it’s all so pointless, then why are you here at all, Olaf? Why don’t you just leave VFD? If you won’t work with us, why do you have to work against us?”

This time, Olaf did her the courtesy of leaving out the shrug. “I’m an actor, Kit. I’ll play my part until the end. And maybe, one day, the curtain will fall and we’ll be free. One day, there will be nothing left to burn.”

Silence. Slowly, it was blown away by the shaking of Kit’s head. “I don’t buy it, Olaf. I think you’re as entrenched in this as any of us. I think it matters to you, more than anything. You wouldn’t know what to do without the VFD.”

“I know exactly what I’d do. I’d go somewhere with you, somewhere far from the treachery in the world. Maybe somewhere by the sea.” The darkness didn’t matter; she could see his face well enough in her mind. The half-smile, twisted up at the corner; the eyebrows, just barely raised. “And I’d kiss you, one last time.”

Kit stood. “I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done.”

By the time Olaf answered, she was already in the hall. He sounded distant, and she wasn’t sure at first if he was speaking to her or himself. “We’ve all put out so many fires in our lives that it was inevitable we would one day to start them.” His last lines followed her up the stairs, through the door she had closed but not locked. (In the morning, he would be gone; her brothers would never understand how.)

“You may not forgive me, Kit, but it’s alright. I forgive you.”


	5. The Neoteric Newspaper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Kellar/Moxie teaming up to save the newspaper after Lemony left”

The Bombinating Beast seemed to glow in the half-light, a figure of ink and malice, an amalgam of things that go bump in the night brought forth into day.

Kellar frowned. “All things considered, perhaps keeping the old mascot was in poor taste.”

“What?” Moxie looked up from the spread, blinking across the table to where Kellar was scrutinizing Ornette’s redesigned logo. “Haines, the Beast is an emblem of my family. If anything, that’s strengthened by what we’ve been through. A monster of the deep, symbollically captured in ink on the page—”

“—much preferable to a monster of the deep, lurking in your backyard,” Kellar finished for her. “Lucky for us, we get both.”

“You might have thought of that before moving here.” Moxie stood, looking around dazedly for a moment before gravitating (as ever) towards her typewriter. “Hurry up with that, will you? Once I’ve got the front page down, we’ll need to verify designs with Ornette.”

“I’m hurryupping.” In direct contradiction to this statement, Kellar lowered his paper. “Mox, you look exhausted. Why don’t you dictate, and I’ll write?”

The reporter didn’t protest, which only made Kellar worry more about the amount of sleep she was getting. “Headline reads ‘The Stain’d Lighthouse Relit.’ Standard byline; attribute yourself as typist this time, not just my name. Copy reads: ‘After years of silent presses and empty ink wells, _The Stain’d Lighthouse_ has returned to Stain’d-by-the-Sea. The revival of the town’s newspaper is a mark of changing times, and can be traced in part to the efforts of newly elected mayor Cleo Knight. Ms. Knight, having revitalized the Stain’d economy with her formula for invisible ink, recently turned her eye to alternative forms of development in’—quit editorializing!”

Moxie pushed Kellar aside, tired eyes slipping over his words as she read aloud. “…and can be traced in part to the efforts of recently elected mayor Cleo Knight. However, the bulk of the credit lies with the paper’s editor-in-chief, Moxie Mallahan. Mallahan, a discerning journalist of no small talent, has been lauded as a savior of not only the newspaper but the town itself.” She snorted, tearing the page away and replacing it with a fresh sheet. “Come on, Haines. We have work to do.”

Somehow, in the flurry of activity that preceded the paper’s grand re-opening, Kellar’s version of the article made its way from the newsroom to Moxie’s bedroom, pressed between the pages of a Kenneth Grahame biography. Decades later, Kellar would stumble upon it and smile. Moxie Mallahan, hero of Stain’d-by-the-Sea…that wouldn’t be news to anyone. It simply was.


	6. The Impartial Informant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “something about Olivia Caliban (and her indecision between both sides of the schism), pre-ASOUE?”

Olivia Caliban was four. The world around her was white, hospital gowns and pale walls. Her sister lay across from her, shuddering beneath the sheets. Someone spoke in the hall outside the infirmary. Olivia tried to shift over to hear better, but her ankle brushed against the cot and suddenly the world was on fire. The pain had dulled in the past hour, just enough that she didn’t have to scream. But then she looked back at Miranda, and she screamed anyways, because she didn’t want to be here. She would learn soon enough that what she wanted didn’t matter.

* * *

 

“You were the last person to hear from R. I received a note, but with things being the way they are I’m not convinced that…well, did she really make it out of the city?”

* * *

 

Olivia Caliban was nine. The world around her was yellow, her commonplace notebook and Miranda’s hair. Her sister’s shoes filled her narrow view from under the bed. She could feel the eye imprinted there leering at her and scooted farther against the wall. They had taken the neophytes to their first active fire site today. Olivia had been preparing for a month, chattering with the other recruits about it each day before class. But she couldn’t chatter now, couldn’t even speak. The ash still coated her tongue, poisoning her voice. So many people in that building, and none of them made it out. Eventually, Miranda abandoned her attempts to lure Olivia free. As the footsteps faded she began to tear pages from her notebook. They cluttered around her, a barricade from the world—but a barricade that would never last through life’s trial by fire.

* * *

 

“Liv, please, you have to tell me. Is Lemony alive?”

* * *

 

Olivia Caliban was twelve. The world around her was orange, the sky at dusk and her chaperone’s neckties. Her sister was halfway across the country, off on her own apprenticeship and her own adventures. Olivia was barely a few miles from the old headquarters. She moaned about it to Frank and Josephine (who were always properly sympathetic), but in truth she was relieved. The world, as her favorite band lamented, was a very scary place. The little she knew of it was enough. The little she knew was too much.

* * *

 

“It’s about Eleanora. I need to help her, she’s out of her league. What do you know about the recent happenings at Damocles Dock?”

* * *

 

Olivia Caliban was sixteen. The world around her was red, blood staining her shirt and flames besieging the night. Her sister leaned on her shoulder, slumped over, the source of the red. Staggering under the weight, Olivia half-dragged Miranda down the street. Together they watched as the headquarters collapsed. Or at least, Miranda watched. Olivia’s eyes were drawn to the side, where Olaf stood, looking as though the blood drained from him instead of her sister. Though it was a warm night made warmer by fire, he shivered so hard that something fell from his pocket. Olivia grabbed it after propping her sister against a wall and turning back dutifully to fight the flames. The next day, when volunteers gathered in the shadow of the wreckage to seek the source of the disaster, she kept the matchbox in her pocket. No one had died. She would keep it that way. He was her friend, even if he was their enemy.

* * *

 

“Oli—Lulu—where are Beatrice and Bertrand’s brats? Don’t lie to me, I know you know where they are.”

* * *

 

Olivia Caliban was twenty-eight. The world around her was black, tattoo ink and charcoal-painted cities. Her sister had left the country on a ship eleven months ago. She hadn’t heard from Miranda since, but the wreckage had washed up on Briny Beach. So Olivia drifted, although a more apt word was “fled.” Library to library, pyre to pyre, collecting memories and news like postage stamps. Everyone welcomed her, at first. Everyone welcomed information. But when you trust everyone, no one trusts you. She stopped drifting towards and began drifting away. Now, when they came, it was because they sought her out, not vice-versa. And they did come.

* * *

 

“But the last page says that there may be a survivor of the fire. Do you know if that’s true?”

* * *

 

Olivia Caliban was thirty-seven. The world around her was white, flowers on an empty grave and notebook pages in an archival library. Her sister was beyond saving, but the others were not. She helped them all. She was sixteen, and even his eyes were trembling. She was twenty-eight, and the boat left despite the storm. She was nine, and the brand on her ankles burned. She was twelve, and right and wrong didn’t matter because they were trapped and someone had to do something. Give the people what they want. She did, she did, she did.


	7. The Flooded Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “something with the flooded forest theory where Ellington goes back to rescue lemony like just in time?? Nice n angsty??”

When he closed his eyes, he saw Kit.

It was night again. He had walked all day, or what passed for day in the skeletal half-light of the Clusterous Forest. The statue clung to him like a promise that should never have been made. He could leave it here, abandon it in the depths of a drained ocean and be done. But the forest was not the Beast’s rightful owner, and Lemony had given his word that he would return it. He was a student of rhetoric. Without his word, he was nothing.

By the end of that first day, however, he was considering a change in specialty. The art of persuasion wasn’t doing nearly as much for him as a working knowledge of oceanography or fringe biology would. The forest had never seemed this large from Stain'd—but the map, he reminded himself with only a baker’s dash of bitterness, is not the territory.

Maybe he had been going in circles all day. As Lemony slumped against a tree of seaweed, he decided that he didn’t really care. A film of water seeped through his suit as he sat, the ghost of rainstorms past. Another ghost joined it as his lashes dropped. Her clothes were black, but the patched black of a soot-dusted city, not the inked black of a town no longer by the sea. She had let her hair grow long again. It tangled down her back, a matted mess after days in containment. By summer it would be chopped short by Jacques’ careful hand, if Kit could safely find her twin. There was a scar on her cheek that Lemony didn’t remember. He pushed the memory down, but it was too late. He knew whose fault the scar was.

* * *

 

When he closed his eyes, he saw Moxie.

This time, when night fell, Lemony didn’t try to sleep. He had gone longer without rest before, and thought it better to keep going than face the nightmares daylight had pushed beyond the brim of awareness. But the nightmares followed him anyways: noises in the seaweed just on the edge of hearing, memories of birds fluttering against his skin in the dark. He strained to see in the night, terrified that if he fell he wouldn’t get back up. Then, of course, he did fall. He landed facedown in a foot of water. Not the sort you could drink, although his mouth was dryer than the hinterlands. This water burned his chapped skin with a brackish flame. But at least his fears were proved unfounded as he stood up on shaking legs. It seemed that the citizens of Stain’d-by-the-Sea had been wrong—some of the ocean, at least, was still present.

Trying to see got him nowhere. That was why Lemony closed his eyes, walking with one hand out before him and one clutching the statue. This time, it was his primary associate whose image haunted him. The train lay broken behind her like so many things broken before—bones, hearts, a trust that everything will work out in the end. Another scar, in a different place but just as much his fault. Eyes carved out by life until they were as weary as the mark on his ankle. They were the eyes of someone who had been left too many times. By her mother, to the city; by her father, to himself; by her best friend, to a morality as grey as ashes and a forest that concealed what had once been a sea. Moxie’s eyes were washed grey before he knew her; now, they must be nearly white.

He must have been walking downhill. The water was up to his knees. Salt water, he noted, tasted like tears, and was almost as abundant in life.

* * *

 

When he closed his eyes, he saw the Beast.

When the stars came out on the third night, Lemony had been awake for the better part of four days. He fell asleep standing on the last day, but the water against his legs woke him after a handful of moments. It still wasn’t the longest he had gone without sleep, but it was the longest he’d gone with neither sleep nor sustenance. Since the train, he hadn’t eaten anything, and although he had done his best on the second and third days to desalinate some of the water (a working knowledge of firestarting theory, a pocket tarp, and a flameproof hat went a long way), the process took far too much time for far too little reward. After an hour of vaporization and condensation, Lemony swore to himself that he would never mention the water cycle again. And by afternoon, everything was too damp to set alight, anyways.

The water level had risen steadily overnight. It was no longer a case of walking downhill; clearly, this was something more than the remnants of a bygone ocean laid to waste. Somehow, the water was returning to the valley around Stain’d-by-the-Sea. And Lemony was caught in the middle of it. By mid-afternoon of his third day in the forest, it was too high to walk. So Lemony shedded his coat and swam, Beast tucked under one arm, until he found a sufficiently think strand of seaweed. Pushing down the inevitable joke about a boy and a beanstalk, he climbed. The water climbed after. It was a race that Lemony was winning until around midnight, at which point he ran out of seaweed. He might have attempted floating to land were the new sea a gentle body of water, peacefully reclaiming control of its domain. But nature, as usual, had other plans. Reborn waves patrolled the forest, tearing against his stalk and sending it swaying. Lemony wasn’t a strong swimmer; he had passed his Emergency Submarine Evacuation exam by repairing the damage to the submarine after everyone else fled, and then sailed around to pick up the castaways. His only chance was if the water ceased rising, and “only chance” was an unpleasant phrase even when one wasn’t facing death in the Clusterous Forest. All he could do was wait, and hold on, and stay awake as the waves lurched against him. But he was so tired…

…and then his eyelids slipped down, and he saw the Beast. The water was all around him now, the seaweed sliding from his grasp, his only anchor broken free. A wave slammed against him and Lemony went down, coughing up water and night as he bobbed back to the surface. The Bombinating Beast was still there. The terror it wielded seemed a tangible thing, a blackness that encompassed everything both within Lemony and without. The Beast itself was an extension of the water and sky around him, punctuated by stars, scaled with the whisper of a man whose daughter would do anything and everything to protect him. Another wave. Down again, up again. Lemony couldn’t tell if the figure was real, if his eyes were still closed or not. It didn’t seem to matter. Because here, drowning in a forest that should have been dry, Lemony could finally fulfill his promise.

He took the statue in both hands, legs working overtime to keep afloat. A voice dry despite its coating of ocean called out into the shadows. “This is for you!”

Another wave. Downagainupagain. When he had coughed the water free from his lungs, he continued.

“I said I would return this to its rightful owner. And that wasn’t Hangfire, and it wasn’t Ellington, and it wasn’t the Mallahans.”

Wave.

“You were never meant to be a monster. That was what he made you, but you don’t have to be what they told you you are.”

Wave.

“No one should have the power to control you. Only you can do that. You’re free. You’re free!”

And then Lemony let go, sending the statue (about the size of a milk bottle, shiny black wood, valued at upwards of a great deal of money) spinning away through the air. It didn’t go far—the water sapped his strength with every second—but it went far enough.

Wave. When he came back up, the Beast was gone, if it had ever been there at all.

* * *

 

When he closed his eyes, he saw Ellington.

Unlike Kit and Moxie, she didn’t look like she had at the train. Her hair was pinned up on her head, and a dark jacket several sizes too large lay over her clothes. But it wasn’t her hair or outfit that struck him as wrong. It was the smile. Ellington Feint, he knew, would never smile at him again. And she had never smiled at him like this before. It wasn’t an enigmatic expression, doubt and trust quirked up at the corners. Her smiles could have meant anything, but this smile was as readable as a book on intragalactal vagrants. This smile meant “I forgive you.”

Lemony cried. His final gift to Stain’d-by-the-Sea, tears swelling the ocean that would save the town as he sank forgotten to the depths. But as his eyes closed against the outpour of water, something registered. His eyes were closing. Which meant that they had been open before.

Solid ground beneath him. Warmth against his skin. Air feeding its way into his lungs. He wasn’t drowning, which meant that someone had saved him. And she would still be there, smiling, when he looked back.

Forgiven.

Lemony Snicket opened his eyes.


	8. The Valorous Volunteer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “something about Kit and Ellington having a conversation about Lemony and the events of ATWQ in prison”

Ellington knew that here—hands cuffed, locked in a cell, guarded by those who knew she was innocent but would do nothing about it—was not the place to turn down a potential ally, but she couldn’t bring herself to shake the girl’s hand. It was clear who she was, and the words she spoke only confirmed what Ellington knew from the slope of her face and the shade of her eyes.

“I’m Kit, Kit Snicket.” After a moment, she dropped her hand, twisting it through her hair with the barest hint of uncertainty. “And you are?”

Ellington could have lied, but there was no point. Her name would mean nothing to this girl if Lemony hadn’t told her about Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and if he had, then she already knew Ellington’s identity as surely as Ellington had known that she must be related to Lemony. “Ellington Feint.” 

“Well, Ellington, it’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re already far better company than the last woman who was in here. She wouldn’t even tell me what her first initial stood for. Although to be fair, I tend to refer to people by their initials anyways.” She shrugged, eyes dancing. “So, E, before they locked you in here, you called someone’s name.”

It was a question posed as a statement, and Ellington was too tired to worry about her reply. “Lemony Snicket. Your brother.”

Kit sat down, hard, in a way that would be considered falling for anyone with less poise. “His chaperone—the woman in here before—I asked her about him, about what he’s been doing in this town so far from the city. But she had all the wrong answers to my questions.”

“Maybe her answers were right, and your questions were just wrong.” The walls of the cell muffled the noise of the world outside, water that washed out the paint of voices into a barely audible blur. Kit wouldn’t have heard what happened, didn’t know what her brother had done.

Lemony’s sister regarded her for a moment with Lemony’s eyes, with his characteristic half-frown that might have meant anything. “I don’t believe in wrong questions.”

“What do you believe in, Ms. Snicket?”

Kit crossed her arms and leaned back, just slightly, a movement that was not Lemony’s but her own. “I believe in stories. Why don’t you tell me yours?”

Ellington opened her mouth to say no, to push off the inquiry with an enigmatic one-liner or turn it back on Kit herself. But when she opened her mouth, the words began to flow as if of their own volition, much as the sea was even now rushing to fill the void around Stain’d-by-the-Sea. As the crowd outside began to disperse and the train was assessed for damage, Ellington spoke. She told Kit of the circumstances that led her to the town, of the empty streets and a coffee shop that almost felt like home. She told Kit of schoolchildren made complacent by force and adults made complacent by ignorance. She told Kit of a man who was a naturalist and a music lover and a villain; and of a boy who was a volunteer and a bibliophile and a murderer. By the end, four of the eyes in the cell were wet, and had the one on Kit’s ankle been capable of weeping, it would be all five. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Brushing at her eyes, Ellington almost managed a smile. “On your brother’s behalf?”

“No. I’m sorry because I would have done the same thing.” Through a sheen of water, Kit met her gaze. 

Ellington tore her focus away. “Why?” She wanted to say more, to shout at Kit—had she been listening at all? He was her father, he loved her, and whatever he deserved, it had been more than this.

“No.” Kit’s voice cut so sharply that it took Ellington a moment to realize that she had been phrasing her thoughts aloud. “You asked me why. Something tells me this is the first time you’ve let yourself cry in a long time. Something tells me that I’m the first person you’ve said all, or any, of this to. How long has it been since you were able to live for yourself, not for your father? How long has it been since you were free to choose your own course? I would have done the same thing because that’s not how family is supposed to work. It’s not about what your father deserves; it’s about what you do. You deserve someone who cares about you, someone who’s honest, who helps you and trusts you. Someone who actually loves you.”

“Are you volunteering?” Ellington meant the words to bite, but their edge crumbled under the tears that had been shed. It didn’t come out as an accusation, but as a plea.

Kit reached out, and this time, Ellington took her hand. “Why not?”

“That’s the wrong question, Ms. Snicket.”

“I don’t believe in wrong questions, E.”

By the time anyone thought to check the prisoners’ compartment, they were a mile away—the two girls, the five eyes, and the skeleton key, vanishing into a morning just begun.


	9. The Quiet Quay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “a follow-up, kinda fluffy thing for the flooded forest one”

Lemony rocked in and out of consciousness, the boat mirroring his movement, until the waves and the thoughts seemed one and the same. But land drew near, and there came a sudden clarity, a vivid set on the stage as the curtains rose: a clearing, once sand, now gravel; water slapping the shore, vindicatively claiming its prize; a boat tied at the long-abandoned quay, old and worn and almost as tired as he felt; a blanket, clinging to his wet clothing; and a smile that meant only what it did.

“Ms. Feint,” he said, and the smile vanished. It was replaced not by the fury he expected (the fury he deserved), but by a concern that darkened her eyes and softened her movements as she handed him a canteen.

“You need to drink.”

Shaking his head and almost instantly regretting it, Lemony dizzily brushed the liquid away. “I’m not one for coffee.” He laughed, but the worry in Ellington’s face only grew.

She pushed it towards him once more. “It’s water. You’re severely dehydrated.”

“I’m not one for water, either,” Lemony murmured, green tendrils and dark shadows drifting over his mind, but he drank nevertheless.

  
Ellington leaned closer, readjusting his blanket. “What are you one for, Mr. Snicket? Aside from getting yourself into dangerous situations.”

“Apologies that come too late to carry any meaning.” Head down, eyes down. “I have a knack for those.”

A moment of silence, or as close to silence as the sea would allow. Then Ellington spoke. “I don’t know that an apology would do much for you in this situation, regardless of what you were taught during your unusual education.”

“Oh.” The word came softly, a bare breath of air. Lemony always knew what to say—he was a student of rhetoric. Words were his ally, his only ally at times like this. But something in her speech and her smile and her question-mark eyebrows stole them away from him until there was nothing left but that single syllable sighed into the wind.

She was right, of course. Sometimes apologies came too late. Sometimes they should never come at all. There are acts that a person cannot forgive. There are lines that, once crossed, become bars.

But then she was speaking again, speaking with the words she had poached from his lips and restructured for her own purposes. “Apologies are redundant when you’ve already been forgiven.”

And then her arm was around him, the blanket around them both, a barrier from the world for what little time it would last. “I loved him. He was my father, and I loved him. And I can’t reconcile that with everything that happened. A couple days ago, I wished—I wished that if one of you had to have fallen victim to the beast, it could have been you.”

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. “What happened?”

“I met your sister. We talked. She…she reminded me that I trust you. And I trust that you believed you were doing the right thing. Whether it not it was truly right is something I didn’t have the liberty of puzzling out; I was too busy saving your life. But I think you were just trying to do the same. You were trying to save us, to save me, and I forgive you.”

This time, the silence was not one of words stolen by guilt, but the comfortable silence of two people who know exactly what the other is thinking without the need for verbal discourse. Lemony leaned on Ellington’s shoulder, and she ran her fingers through his hair.

Forgiven. Not forgotten, not moved beyond, but accepted. The Beast kept its vigil in the Clusterous Forest; the sea had yet to wash the dust from Stain’d-by-the-Sea. Those were problems for tomorrow. For now, they simply sat in the fragile moment between one peril and the next and appreciated each other.

Solitude, Lemony reflected, was not a bad name. But companionship was one he liked even better.


	10. The Calamitous Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “the story of the sugar bowl being stolen (presumably by lemony, though I can’t remember if that’s canon)”

Those familiar with chaos theory or the works of Ray Bradbury may know of the butterfly effect, a phrase which here means that seemingly insignificant factors can have grand effects. A similar term was coined by a sub-sub-librarian whose mission in life was to uncover and document the history of a dubiously noble organization. He called it the dragonfly effect.

A man once stole an item from the tea set of the city’s then eighth most important financial advisor. Because this item was stolen, the financial advisor accused the woman she took tea with that day of the theft. Because she accused the woman, she vowed to get revenge. Because she vowed to get revenge, she allied herself with a firestarter. Because she allied herself with a firestarter, she learned how to use a box of matches. Because the financial advisor learned how to use a box of matches, the woman died.

A man once stole an item that he was supposed to give to his organization but did not. Because he kept it from them, the organization let him take the blame for a series of crimes. Because he was blamed, the man was forced to flee the country. Because he was forced to flee the country, the man did not receive a crucuial message about the actions of an old enemy. Because the man did not receive this message, the woman died.

A man once stole an item without telling his fiancé that he would do so on the very day she came to visit an old acquaintance. Because he did not tell her, she grew resentful of the smoke and mirrors of their life. Because she grew resentful, she broke off their engagement. Because she broke off their engagement, she married another. Because she married another, she went with him instead of the first man to a masked ball. Because she went with the other, the first man’s warning came too late. Because the man’s warning came too late, the woman died.

A man once stole an item that was desired by noble librarians and villanous arsonists. Because of this theft, he deepened an already treacherous rift into an irreparable schism. Because of this schism, the volunteer fire department of a city crumbled. Because this fire department crumbled, there was no one to put out the flames that thrived in the growing chaos. Because there was no one to put out the flames, the woman died.

A man once stole an item, and because of this, the last time he saw the woman was at a masked ball. She was dressed as a dragonfly. They would dance, and because of this, she would die.

But Dewey Denouement would not coin his term for years. Beatrice was still alive and well. And Lemony—skulking his way in through the open window, stealing across the floor, breath quickened and heart lurching—Lemony did not know of the series of unfortunate events he was setting in motion.

He would know soon enough.


	11. The Melancholy Manuscript

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “something about jerome squalor writing his book or deciding to try and find the baudelaires and meeting up with justice strauss along the way”

Jerome liked order. The world was a loud, crowded room at a party he hadn’t felt particularly inclined to go to in the first place, and even the smallest routine was a comfort worth its weight in parsley soda. So it was with a cup of coffee in hand and a newspaper tucked under one arm that he stepped off the bus for the Village of Fowl Devotees. The sun drew farther from the horizon. The coffee (iced, thankfully) drained away to nothing. And the furrow of Jerome’s brow deepened as he read.

The article was not from _The Daily Punctilio_. He had read that one, of course, multiple times, but the more he did so the less sense it made. So Jerome had turned to smaller papers, less known but—maybe—more honest. The one in his hands now (what was it called, the something lighthouse?) certainly seemed truthful, but it was a truth Jerome did not want to hear.

He entered the town limits. Up ahead, a cluster of older villagers were gathered around a long wooden box. There seemed to be some quarrel about its contents. But the noise was drowned out by the rushing shock of seeing a name he hadn’t seen in years, the name he least expected to see in the middle of nowhere on a sheet of paper printed miles away in a town neither Jerome nor—to his knowledge—the bearer of the name had ever been to.

The coffee mug slid through his fingers, shattering on the sun-hardened ground like so many promises from his youth. Jerome did not want to read further, but it ddin’t matter. He was close enough to see inside the box, to see the face that belonged to the name that belonged to a past half-buried in regret.

If Jerome had been asked to pick one person he thought had a strong shot at living to the end of time, it would have been Jacques Snicket. Here, in the Village of Fowl Devotees, time had ended.

* * *

 

It’s strange, how much sense the world makes when you’re willing to make sense of it. As Jerome began tracing the Baudelaires, he uncovered not just their history but his own. Jacques, Beatrice, Bertrand, Lemony, Kit—through all the years he had known them, they were involved in a vast conspiracy of cloaks, daggers, and literature right under his nose. The more he found, the more there was to find. And it seemed that someone was intent on him finding it. Everywhere he went, there was another message for J.S. At first he assumed these were meant for Jacques by those who hadn’t received the news, but as time wore on he had his doubts. VFD, from what he’d read, thrived on information. If he had discovered Jacques’ death, then the remnants of the organization must have as well. Which meant that someone knew what he was doing. Someone—Jacques’ siblings? One of the volunteers he’d read about?—was on his side.

He was on his way into the hinterlands, winter just beginning to creep over autumn. It was 7:02 in the morning, and Jerome had his coffee (iced, unfortunately) and his reading material balanced on shivering knees. This made for a poor combination when a voice spoke behind him, causing him to jump up and his drink and paper to mix in the most unpleasant of ways.

“Hello, there. Cold day for a hike, isn’t it?”

Jerome stared, coffee freezing to his shoes. He recognized the person speaking, not from a prior meeting but from his investigations. And evidently the same was true for her, because they both spoke at once.

“Justice Strauss?”

“Jerome Squalor?”

They nodded, shook hands, and then (as though on cue) both began to laugh, struck at once by the absurd formality of their scene here on the edge of nowhere. Jerome looked down, shook the paper off as best he could, and tried to regain his composure. “Well,” he managed finally, “I imagine we have a lot to talk about. Can I make you some coffee?”

* * *

 

It wasn’t hard for them to get a fire going when they made camp for the night. Neither had matches, but their self-imposed crash courses in VFD included basic firebuilding.

“You really knew them, then. The Snickets and the Baudelaire parents.”

Jerome turned away, blinking back the sudden sting of smoke in his eyes. “Yes, I knew them. Jacques more than the others. Or at least, I thought I knew them.”

“I’m sure he had a good reason for keeping VFD from you. Their world is a dangerous one. Our world, now.” Justice Strauss lifted a hand, gesturing uncertainly.

Shaking his head, Jerome looked up. “Oh, he had a good reason. But I don’t think that was it. I abandoned the Baudelaires. I let Esmé become a villain. I’ve never been noble enough for VFD, or brave enough. Jacques knew that.”

As Justice Strauss’ normally kind eyes pierced into him, Jerome suddenly understand just how skilled of a judge she must be. “You may have left them, but I was never there for them to begin with. You want to speak about courage? I wasn’t brave enough to be their guardian in the first place. I simply let Arthur Poe drive them out of my life.” She reached over the flames, which scattered at the sudden movement, and took Jerome’s hand. “It’s not about what we’ve done. It’s about what we can still do.”

“I don’t know what I can do. I’m not a law professional, or a respected doctor, or a politician. I don’t know what difference I can make. There’s nothing I can do. I want to, but I just—can’t.”

For a moment, Jerome thought that he had, like VFD, presented to Justice Strauss yet another question with no answer. But she had been studying the organization for longer than he. She knew that the answers were there, if you looked long enough.

“There is something you can do: what you’ve already begun doing. Learn the truth about the Baudelaires, about the Snickets, about injustice and nobility. Once you’ve uncovered the story, share it just as you’ve shared it with me. Become a public speaker, a newspaper reporter. Go write a book. Bring the light and discussion of our little campfire tonight to the world.”

And though her eyes were still sharp, Jerome couldn’t help but laugh once more. “Write a book, me?”

She fixed him with her potent gaze and wry smile. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed. Within a month, the first draft was done. A comprehensive history of injustice, it delved into the true character of his wife and the dismal secrets of his friends. There was a chapter on each of the figures who had built upon the burden of the Baudelaire’s woe—including, towards the end, the biography of a sad man who had never wanted to argue. (The original draft of that chapter was highlighted with the rippled blurs of tearstains.) But that hadn’t been the hardest part to write. The hardest part, his favorite part, came before even the table of contents. It was a page bearing the legend “Dedication” at the top. Beneath, in simple lettering, was a single line.

_For J. S.—both of you._


	12. The Momentous Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Beatrice and Bertrand and a bit of relationship development for them, like the beginning of their relationship or something to show how in love they were”

Beatrice shot through the maintenance hatch onto the roof, kicking it closed behind her, rolling on impact, and coming out in a breakneck run that would have ensured her an unseen exit from the building, had the roof not already been occupied.

The boy was staring at her with grey deer-eyes, caught in the headlights but not frightened so much as curious. Beatrice took advantage of his momentary surprise, going on the offensive with a hurried “What are you doing up here?” that, while not original, bought her three seconds to ascertain that there was no easy way off the roof aside from back into the building. It was an inane question at the best of times, let alone when posed by a twelve-year-old who clearly had no authority to ask it. But when he answered, it was with none of the derision the query deserved.

“Stargazing.” He said it quickly, with what someone in a more usual line of work might pin as embarrasment. But if Beatrice’s unusual education had taught her anything, it was the fine science of suspicion. And in this case, her suspicion did not seem to be unfounded; despite his claim to the contrary, the boy was missing one crucial element of amateur astronomy. 

“There aren’t any stars out.”

He adjusted his glasses, a nervous tic shared by Beatrice’s friend R. She wondered distractedly if his eyes were really as big as they seemed, or if the glasses simply magnified them. “Not yet, but the sun is almost done setting, and there are no clouds.” 

There was no sound from the building below them; Beatrice had not been followed. Which meant that if this boy was who he seemed to be, she would be safe up here; if not, it was her duty to figure out what he was hiding. She walked over to where he sat, although she didn’t take the empty spot on the blanket next to him. Beatrice had to admit that he certainly looked prepared for stargazing. Aside from the blanket, there was a thermos, a collapsible telescope, and a small stack of books. The first seemed to be a commonplace book, and the second an astronomical field guide, but it was the third—a thin chapbook of poetry—that caught her eye. It was as out of place as she was on this roof, the perfect hiding place for the boy’s secrets. 

“Are you a reader of John Godfrey Saxe?”

“Excuse me?” Beatrice stepped back quickly; she hadn’t noticed the boy watching her.

He nodded towards the book. “The poet. He’s a favorite of mine. I like Swinburne as well, but I simply can’t resist American humorist poets of the nineteenth century.”

Eyes narrowed slightly, Beatrice searched his words for some hidden message or meaning—no twelve-year-old (for he looked to be about her age) sounded that pretentious. No twelve-year-old, she corrected herself, whose last name wasn’t Snicket. And yet there was an earnestness to his tone that discounted suspicion and bombast alike; a sense that he didn’t see the disconnect between the grandiloquence of his words and the naiveté of his eyes. It was endearing, in a way. 

“The sun’s down. Hopefully I look a little less ridiculous now.” He grinned at her. Beatrice hadn’t even noticed the growing shadows, the red and yellow of a distant dusk fading over to black. 

Arms crossed, head tilted slightly. The roof wasn’t lit, and soon the boy would be no more than an outline. “Do you do this a lot? Come up here and—stargaze?”

He shrugged. “Recently. It’s a good escape from…it’s just a new hobby, I guess. I’ve never had someone to do it with, though. Do you want to join me?” Seeing the hesitation on Beatrice’s face, he stood up, almost knocking over the books, and held out his hand. “Sorry, that’s a bit presumptuous when I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Bertrand.”

The people who had been following her would be long gone by now, the building safe for retreat. Her chaperone would be worried. And there was no possible advantage to be found from giving a stranger her identity. And yet—

“Beatrice.” She took his hand, and it was a long moment before she let go. There was something about this Bertrand. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. 

For security reasons.


	13. The Lighthouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “a cute fluffy platonic Lemony/Moxie/Kellar fic, mid-atwq, where lemony gets rlly I’ll and is super out of it and ends up collapsing on the steps of the lighthouse or something? Cue moxie and Kellar flipping outand taking are of the poor child”

The darkness clung to Lemony like a blanket as he staggered over the uneven ground, coagulating on his skin in tendrils of night. The weight of it was so thick, so tangible, that even the light was not light so much as an absence of shadow. It was this light—pulsing, there-and-gone, freeform light—towards which the apprentice struggled. And it was, undeniably, a struggle. The storm drumming down on Stain’d-by-the-Sea seemed to have driven the earth from its usual velocity, setting the planet spinning at an ever-increasing rate. Lemony could run fast (he would prove that over and over in life, just how fast and far he could run away), but it wasn’t enough to keep the dizzying pace. Or maybe the dizzying was in his head, and the earth was the one slowing. He didn’t know. He didn’t know either that the light he was fighting towards was not the haven of the Stain’d lighthouse but the too-near gash of lightning. He didn’t know a lot of things, but suddenly it no longer mattered. Lemony collapsed to the ground, rain and shadows pooling around him.

* * *

 

“I’m going to kill him.”

“That might prove to be difficult. Something tells me that Setnick’s harder to cross off than he looks.”

“Unless you’re a thunderstorm, apparently! What was he thinking?”

“Knowing him, something sarcastic yet poignant.”

“Did he just move?”

“I don't—”

“Snicket, can you hear me? Lemony?”

* * *

 

The blanket clung to Lemony like the darkness had clung to Lemony like a blanket. For a moment, he could believe that he was back in the city, Jacques asleep across the room. But the illusion didn’t last; something was wrong. Or maybe something was right, too right—there was a warmth in the air, a sense of what might almost be called security. A sense that his organization’s headquarters had always lacked.

He sat up, the blanket sliding off his shoulders. There was a faint buzzing in his head (”bombinating” was too ironic of a word for even him to consider), but he felt more awake than he had since leaving the Lost Arms. Theodora hadn’t even noticed that he was—

“—dying? Thankfully, it was practically in our backyard.” Kellar Haines leaned against the far wall, his dynamite hair brushed raggedly aside and the circles beneath his eyes a shade darker than usual. “And evidently you’re not as lucid as you think, because you just said all of that out loud. Mox!”

There was a stirring on the other end of the couch as Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s best reporter opened her eyes. Lemony hadn’t even noticed her, buried as she was beneath what seemed to be a raincoat. “What’s the news, Moxie?”

“Lemony Snicket.” The relief in her tone felt almost as warm as the room. “Kellar, I told you to wake me up after an hour.”

“An hour?” Lemony tried to stand, thought better of it, and settled for straightening his back slightly. “How long have I been here?”

Kellar glanced across the room, consulting a clock next to a framed portrait of Dorothy Parker. “We found you at eleven, so four hours, give or take. Your fever’s come down since then, but you should probably keep sleeping.”

“So should you, Kellar.” Moxie pushed the brim of her hat back, rubbing her eyes. “I’ll pull out a cot. Assuming Lemony has what I just got over, you haven’t been sick with it yet. It’s best if we keep things that way. No sharing blankets.”

Before Kellar could protest, there was a high whistle from the kitchen. He ran towards the noise, leaving Moxie to drag more bedding down to the living room (scolding Lemony every time he moved to help). The cot proved to be stuck beneath old printing press pieces, so she piled the quilts and throws as well as she could on the floor. By that time Kellar had returned, followed by the steam from three mugs of tea.

“Vanilla creamer in yours, Mox. Setnick, you like your tea plain, right?”

Lemony nodded, wincing slightly as the dizziness from his late-night stroll returned. “Bitter as wormwood. That’s what my…what one of my associates always says.” He set the drink down, then raised it quickly to his lips upon seeing Moxie and Kellar’s expressions. “Thank you.”

“For the tea, or for bringing you in out of the rain?” Moxie reclaimed her position on the couch, leaving Kellar to burrow in amongst the blankets on the floor. “What were you doing out there in the first place?”

“I go walking, sometimes. At night, when I can’t sleep and Theodora is being particularly difficult. It clears my head. And between this cold and everything that’s been happening, my head was in dire need of clearing. I didn’t account for the weather.”

“Evidently,” Kellar commented dryly. The effect was somewhat ruined by a yawn beginning halfway through the word.

Moxie’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned down to pull Kellar’s mug from his hands. “This had better not be caffeinated, Haines. You need your sleep. I’ll stay awake for now.”

“Why don’t you just both sleep?” Lemony knew his suggestion bordered on the hypocritical—his four-hour nap tonight was the longest stretch of unbroken sleep he’d had in weeks—but he was a firm advocate of rest and health when it came to his friends. (He was startled at how naturally the word slipped into his thoughts. Not associates, but friends.)

Moxie and Kellar exchanged a look. “It’s something we’ve been doing since I began staying here,” Kellar explained after a moment. “Neither of us slept much to begin with, and with Hangfire around we thought it might be smart to have someone alert at all times.”

It was smart. It was what his organization would advise. Something about that made Lemony feel queasier than his fever did. “Well, I imagine we’ll be safe tonight. Villains aren’t postal workers; they have no obligation to go out in the rain, especially at three a.m.”

Moxie frowned and Kellar opened his mouth, but Lemony cut them off. “And if you two won’t get some rest, then I’ll have to stay up as well.”

They looked at one another, the typist, the journalist, and the student of rhetoric, and nodded. Not one of the three had any intention of falling asleep, of course, but they saw no reason to inform the others of this. And so they sipped at already-lukewarm tea, and nestled under more blankets than the temperature required, and pretended to sleep. Outside, lightning played connect-the-dots with stars. Within the lighthouse, three distinct patterns of breath merged into one as the pretense of sleep became a reality.

Lemony was wrong about it, that warmth in the air of the lighthouse. He thought it was security, and in a way, that was true. It simply wasn’t the whole truth. “Love” was a word as unfamiliar on his tongue as “friends,” spoken only in relation to the siblings he’d left behind. But a mind can adapt to a phrase as easily as a mouth to the taste of bitter tea, and Lemony had always been adaptable.


End file.
